In an article published in Pearls and Irritations, I look at the question of faith-based political parties. This is a subject that has been discussed in the media following the defection of Senator Fatima Payman from the Labor Party. The senator, who is a Muslim, left the party after crossing the floor to vote in favour of a Greens’ motion regarding the recognition of Palestinian statehood.… Read the rest
In June 2024 Connor Court Publishing published my latest book, Sister Liguori: The Nun Who Divided a Nation (ISBN: 9781923224063, Paperback 254 pages, RRP $34.95).
It is the true but amazing story of an Irish Catholic nun who in July 1920 fled her Wagga Wagga convent on a frosty winter’s night dressed only in her nightdress fearful she was about to be murdered by her mother superior.… Read the rest
The continuing horror in Gaza touches us all deeply, even if only vicariously. It leads us ineluctably to the question, often asked in exasperation: Is there no solution? In an article in Pearls and Irritations I look at whether the 1998 Belfast Good Friday Agreement (BGFA), which ended the Troubles in Northern Ireland might be a model for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict.… Read the rest
In 2019 the Irish Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand held a conference in Adelaide on ‘Foregrounding Irish Women: the Antipodes and beyond’. The organisers of the conference have just published a book Irish Women in the Antipodes Foregrounded which includes several of the papers presented at the conference. One of the chapters is my paper entitled ‘More than Mannix: Irish-Australian women who helped defeat conscription in WW1’.… Read the rest
The announcement on 20 March 2024 of Leo Varadkar’s decision to resign as taoiseach came as a shock to the press, the public and many of his colleagues in the Oireachtas. Having served in the Dáil as a TD since 2007, having held ministerial rank since 2011, and having held office as taoiseach from 2017 to 2020 and 2022 to 2024, Varadkar has decided at the relatively young age of 45 to quit politics.… Read the rest
For two years Northern Ireland has been without devolved government following the Democratic Unionist Party’s boycott of the Executive in protest over the Northern Ireland Protocol.
On Saturday 3 February 2024 the Northern Ireland Assembly met and elected as First Minister Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill, the first nationalist member of the assembly to hold that position.… Read the rest
Earlier this year, ABC Radio National broadcast in its ‘The History Listen’ series a program called ‘The Missing Magdalens’ about Australia’s Magdalen laundries. The program focussed on St Magdalen’s Retreat, Tempe, which the Sisters of the Good Samaritan ran from 1888 to 1980. In describing life at St Magdalen’s in the early twentieth century, the program relied on an article in the Watchman newspaper.… Read the rest
On 21 July 2023 the annual international commemoration of the Great Irish Famine was held in Sydney at the monument to the Great Irish Famine at Hyde Park Barracks. I had the privilege of giving the address to the assembled crowd, which included Irish Minister of State, Thomas Byrne, the Irish ambassador to Australia, Tim Mawe, and the Irish consul general in Sydney, Rosie Keane.… Read the rest
Recently a writer for the Sydney Morning Herald claimed to have solved the mystery of why Sr Liguori fled her convent in Wagga Wagga one frosty evening in July 1920. In its day the Liguori affair was one of the most sensational episodes in Australia’s sectarian history. In the Herald’s print edition of 3 April 2023, the article carried the salacious headline: ‘Pregnant to a priest, nun on run defied church over child’.… Read the rest
For nine months following the elections for the Northern Ireland Assembly in May 2022, nothing much changed in Northern Ireland. Then on 27 February 2023 the sleeping giant awoke. On that day the British prime minister Rishi Sunak and the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen jointly announced they had agreed to resolve their differences over the Northern Ireland Protocol.… Read the rest